Let go of stress and reconnect with your creativity and daily life

How much I would like to be “an untroubled wholeness with the world“… [Sarah Kaufman]

These last two weeks I have been again much too busy : I feel I’m being lived, rather then living enjoying life. And the first part of me getting lost is my creativity and my connectedness with the world around me I care for.

I feel it in my whole body now: the stress hurts. Last week I got another wake up call with the sudden death of a friend. I didn’t know her since long time. Only since 4 months. The worst part was that I realized with her funeral that I DIDN’T KNOW AT ALL WHAT A WONDERFUL BEING SHE REALLY HAS BEEN… I haven’t taken the time nor the energy to REALLY get to know her. I haven’t really talked to her (apart from superficial chattering that doesn’t count like “talking”) and… I misjudged her. That’s a nasty look in the mirror… A slam in the face.

So now I once again make the decision to become more kind, more grateful, more generous, more attentionate, more mindfull… I want to be really connected with the world around me, the whole time. With the real world.

What does this have to do with creativity? Your inner life and well being influences your creativity the whole time. When I feel down & out I have a lot of trouble to get myself painting and drawing, and at the same time I know that when I kick my butt and start drawing it’s like a meditation and will make me feel better and make my doubts vanish. When you think of that: it’s all that doubt and life that get in the way of making art. Drawing is not just an technical exercise. It’s an intense connection to daily life.

Here I edited another video I made in Japan: a drawing with twig and chinese ink in the most beautiful art supply shop in the world: Pigment Shop Tokyo, a shop designed by famous architect Kengo Kuma. The shop has a very complex bamboo ceiling. The act of drawing with a twig is very liberating, because it’s almost impossible to draw “correctly”. This way I allow myself more freedom…! You should try!

I learned drawing with this twig by artist Ch’ng Kiah Kiean during the last urban sketchers symposium in Manchester ( check out his website: http://kiahkiean.com/ )

You need a twig on which you make a point with a knife. You dip it in a recipient with gauze and chinese ink. The blurring is done with a hard brush which I dip on a sponge with some ink on it. It has to be quite dry.

Finally I watercolored the drawing.

Now it’s up to you!

Try it out and let go of all the monkeys in your head that tell you you can’t draw ! And… CHALLENGE YOURSELF : draw and paint in a way you never did before! You will feel so free afterwards! I guarantee it !

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Love and take care!

Barbara

urban sketching with twig and chinese ink

8 Comments

Barbara
on 31 March 2017 at 21 h 32 min

Nice post! Thank you! I am trying to be less busy also. And I like the idea of letting go of things, tasks, people, ect. that don’t line up with my priorities in life.

Barbara, your post is exactly what I needed to hear today. I have felt the same way when people move away, get another job, and certainly when they’ve died. Did I miss an opportunity to make a friend? So many times the answer is “yes”. I don’t have the problem of work getting in the way of my creativity, but I let “blue moods” get me down. I forget how good it feels to draw and paint…how everything else (fears, doubts, etc.) falls away. Thanks for your post.

Thank you Stacy for your beautiful comment!
It’s nicely written ” I let the blue moods get me down”. It’s exactly that! And then it takes even a lot of energy to get the sketchbook out and we forget how much more energy we get in return when we do…

Thank you for sharing this beautiful and interesting post , I love the way I recognize a lot when reading it . The twig is indeed a wonderful tool to get loosen up I’ve used it a lot when doing quick poses of life model with the most beautiful results even so the result isn’t the most important it’s more the experience. Wish you an artsy week .